James Lide Coker
James Coker was a successful business owner in Darlington County and helped establish Welsh Neck High School, which became Coker College.

Archibald Grimke
Archibald Grimke was a lawyer, journalist, community leader, and involved in the early NAACP. The abolitionist Grimke sisters were his aunts.

Benjamin R. Tillman
Ben Tillman was the governor of South Carolina from 1890-194 who founded what is now Clemson University, regulated the railroads, and helped write a constitution designed to disenfranchise African American citizens with Jim Crow laws.

Culture

The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the Carolinas
Read more about the history of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that used violence against African Americans and sympathetic whites to maintain political and social white supremacy.

Education Among the Freedmen
This pamphlet from the Pennsylvania Branch of the American Freedmen's Union Commission is designed to raise funds to support a school for freedmen in St. Helena.

Pirates, Plankton, & Pelicans
Explore a replica of a schooner that was originally built by the Samuel J. Pregnall & Bros. Shipyard Shipyard in Charleston in 1879.

Woodrow Wilson Family Home
Take a virtual tour of the Columbia home built in 1872 that was home to a teenage Woodrow Wilson, who would later become the 28th president of the United States.

The Clouds Beyond
During the Great Depression, interviewers with the WPA recorded the lives and stories of former slaves in South Carolina. This interview is from 1939 in Blythewood, SC and captures the recollections of a former slave who was just 12 years old when General Sherman came through the state.

Government & Freedman's Bureau

Black Voting Rights: Creating the 15th Amendment
Explore illustrations and cartoons from the Harper Weekly magazine that focus on the 15h Amendment that prohibits governments from using a citizen's race, color, or previous status as a slave as a voting qualification.

Freedmen's Bureau Online
The Freedmen's Bureau was a federal agency in the southern states to help former slaves, including providing emergency food and housing and helping the freedmen adjust to their conditions of freedom.

Media Commentary

One way we know of events and political "moods" in South Carolina is by reading the papers and magazines of the era. Read these articles and political cartoons to explore how citizens reacted to lynching, African American political representation, speeches, and more.